Lehrgebiet Informationssysteme

FB Informatik

LG IS

AG DBIS

(C) AG DBIS

Information Structures and Database Support for Solid Modeling

Theo Härder, Christoph Hübel, Bernhard Mitschang

University of Kaiserslautern
P.O. Box 3049, 67653 Kaiserslautern, Germany
e-mail: haerder@informatik.uni-kl.de

Full paper (postscript version compressed by gzip)

Abstract:

The question we are going to investigate is how to map solid representations to DB structures and how to process this information efficiently. Starting from analytical representations based on analytical meth ods we discuss the use of constructive solid geometry and boundary representation models with arious refinements. Furthermore, additional submodels (organizational, technological, physical) are considered in order to obtain an overall product model. This model representing all important aspects of a omplex design object may serve to derive special object representations needed by existing egineering tools or by mathematical methods (e.g. finite elements).

Today's DBMS are unable to meet the increasing requirements of engineering applications that would prefer to use a DBMS. To alter this situation, a new generation of DBMS architectures tailored to the demands of such enhanced applications have to be developed. As a consequence, the flexibility and expressiveness of data models as well as the handling of application objects must be greatly improved before interactive design work can be supported. We outline our data model concepts and architectural decisions to provide effective data management support. Our DBMS architecture consists of a neutral kernel part running on a server machine and an application layer tailored to solid modeling tasks which together with the application, i.e. the solid modeler is allocated to the workstation.

Published in Proc. of Int. Workshop on Theory and Practice of Geometric Modeling, Blaubeuren, Germany, 1988.